If You Need People Perhaps You are not Called to Eremitical Life. Really??

[[Dear Sister Laurel, While I appreciated your article on the role of the bishop in supervising the c 603 hermit, and while I think I can see how it is a delegate or delegates can be of aid to the bishop and the hermit both, I was struck by a sense that this kind of institutionalization is very far from traditional hermit life. Whatever happened to "God alone is enough"? I know you have written about charges of an inappropriate institutionalization in the past, once just recently, but I hope you will renew the discussion. If you need the Sisters you mentioned, or if a bishop is not able to supervise hermits in his diocese, mightn't this indicate either 1) you are not called to the kind of solitude eremitical life requires, and/or 2) canon 603's insistence on the supervision of the hermit's life by a bishop is contrary to the life of a hermit? I have posed my questions in a deliberately provocative way, but I hope you will take them as a challenge to answer questions which might trouble some readers. Thanks!]]

I very much appreciate your clarity in the way you posed your questions. I also agree that you have asked things which others are likely troubled by. For instance, I have been reminded freshly recently that there is a strong thread of anti-institutionalization among some lay hermits and I think that comes from several places: 1) a failure to understand the eremitical vocation as specifically ecclesial, 2) an ignorance of history and the way eremitical lives were discerned and lived through the majority of church history in the Western as well as the Eastern Church, and, 3) the emergence and near epidemic instance of an individualism which neglects or rejects the essential need for human intimacy and relatedness. Yes, I have written about all of these over the past decade and a half; I can try to summarize that here and I will try to draw from the article you mentioned specifically to explain both the way I live solitude, and the way the persons I mentioned (Sisters Susan and Marietta, and (by extension) my bishop and others) contribute to that rather than detract from it. Hopefully that will answer the specific questions you posed.

The Ecclesial Nature of the Eremitical Vocation I Live:

I think it goes without saying that there are many "flavors" or "stripes" of solitude, but let me say it anyway. Some go off to physical solitude to test themselves and their own capacities. One example of this might be Richard Proenecke who, initially at least, went off to Alaska for a year, and who then found he thrived in the solitude while creatively meeting the various challenges he encountered every single day. His story is inspiring as he explores the limits and capacities of the human person alone (or nearly so since he received assistance from a friend who flew in supplies, and allowed access to a shelter which made initial survival a good deal easier). Even so, there is no doubt that Proenecke lived a clear and very significant solitude that would reduce most people to terror or functional catatonia in short order -- unless it killed them outright!

Another example I have referred to here a number of times is the misanthropy and failure to live one's life fruitfully with others represented by Tom Leppard (cf labels to right) and called eremitism by some. Tom Leppard identified others as the heart of his problems in life and hied himself off to the Isle of Skye where he could live without dealing with others often, if at all. Or, consider the solitude of the individual professed according to canon 14 in the Anglican/Episcopal Church who writes that his profession as a solitary religious was specifically meant to say he was not called to community of any sort at all; he was, he claimed, constituted by his anti-communal call and profession. Then again, recall the solitude of someone living in the wilderness of solitary confinement during a 30 year sentence in a US "Super Max" prison or the physical solitude of a child growing up with an impaired immune system who must live in a bubble, or of an elderly person who has lost all of  her family, has few remaining friends and has grown apart from the rhythms and activities of ordinary society. These forms of solitude are vastly different from one another in their shapes and motivations and they all contrast significantly with my own vocation to canon 603 eremitical life.

Finally, consider the person who embraces eremitical life because they feel God is calling them to this; they have a sense of wholeness as a human being in solitude and witness to the love of God by embracing such a call. They feel called to the desert as Jesus was called to the desert, 1) to do battle with the demonic dwelling in their own hearts and in the world around them, and 2) to consolidate their identities as Daughters and Sons of God for their own sake and, in some cases, for the the sake of others. These persons are hermits as the Church defines them generally, and this is what  I am called to as well. You can see how vastly different such vocations are from those described above. Even so, beyond this difference and further specifying it, is the single characteristic that further defines and modifies the distinctive shape and motivation of my own solitude; the very thing that makes it eremitical in a way which contrasts with all of these other forms is its ecclesiality.

Like other Catholic Hermits, I am called by God to live this vocation to the silence of solitude in the heart of the Church, both through her mediation and in her name. With her I have discerned this vocation and been professed, consecrated, and missioned (commissioned, in fact) to live eremitical life in a publicly committed way for the sake of God and all who and that are precious to God.  Unlike those who live eremitical life in the lay state, the Church directly supervises Catholic Hermits' living out of their vocations; she has allowed us to make a life commitment to this call and will help ensure it is truly a call to human wholeness which witnesses to the power of the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ. Because of this ecclesial dimension, we are empowered to live authentically human and eremitical life in a responsive and responsible way for the sake of others, and to do so in season and out, in times of darkness and of light.  It is the public and ecclesial dimension of these lives which transform  and stabilize them into vocations.

"God Alone is Enough"

 So what happened to the famous (and in some senses infamous) saying, "God alone is enough?" Have canonical hermits dropped that for the sake of an institutionalization that curtails eremitical freedom and feeds the hermit's tendency to pride, for instance? I don't think so. The affirmation "God alone is enough" can be read several different ways. Two are critical for the hermit, 1) We need no one and nothing but God, 2) only God is able to complete us as human beings and we will be incomplete without God. Eremitical life has generally taken both of these affirmations to be true but recognized that the first cannot be taken literally; it is simply not true when understood literally. The second affirmation is always seen as true and most often is understood to be primary.  We take it literally. Sometimes the first affirmation has been made primary. This has happened with those who live reclusion, but it has also happened with those who criticize hermits who are active in their parishes or dioceses even when this is significantly limited in comparison to other religious or ministers.

Hermits have reached a place in their lives where they feel called to witness to the truth that only God can complete us as human beings. In fact, only God (including all the ways God is mediated to us through the lives and love of others) can call us to authentic human existence. We don't say "I don't need anything or anyone other than God" for that would be untrue and, in fact, result in a narrowed and cramped humanity, a shadow of the fullness of life one is called to in Christ. We need other human beings, friends who speak God's truth to us and call us to be our best selves, family who know us more deeply than maybe any others and who love us for who we are, superiors who allow us to be accountable for the gifts God has graced us with and who inspire us to fulfill the commitments we have made for the sake of ourselves and all those others we touch, priests and pastors, physicians, teachers, mentors, and all those who touch our lives and enrich them with their presence and the presence of God in all of the ways God seeks to come to us.

However, while we do not reject the important place of others in our lives,  we have come to a place there where we limit contact with others so we can witness in a more vivid way to the truth that without God we are less than whole, less than human, and that only God is the source of these; only God is sufficient to complete us as human beings. In that sense, "God alone is enough (or sufficient)"! (As Thomas Aquinas said, "Only God is sufficient" --- with all the rich and varied senses of "sufficient" that includes.) The solitude of the hermit says that "God alone is enough" and more, that some of the things our world counts as essential to life are simply not. It is not essential to be wealthy or powerful or to live without constraints. Freedom and well-being are defined differently for a Christian (or an authentically human being). The meaningfulness of our lives is measured in terms of love and generous service, not in terms of productivity or capitalism and consumerism. We are called to be attentive and responsive to the God who gives us life, not to the values of a world which too often defines humanity antithetically to the way the Kingdom (Family) of God defines this.

My need for others:

Your question in this assumes that eremitical requires a certain kind or degree of solitude and that my need for the mentoring, accompaniment, and supervision by others, indicates I am not called to eremitical life. in fact eremitical life has ALWAYS had such things, and required them. Ordinarily some needs have always been obviated by considering eremitical life as a "second-half-of life" vocation which builds on significant formation and assistance by others in religious life. Even so, the need for mentors was built into the Desert Abbas and Ammas lives when they moved to the desert (i.e.,  any wilderness outside the cities). Because I have written about this fairly recently I will refer you to a couple of posts which discuss this rather then repeating this material. Please see: Never Alone in This, The Place of Elders in Eremitical Life, and Religious Obedience and the Ministry of Authority See also other posts under the label, Ministry of Authority, Delegates, Spiritual Directors (or Spiritual Direction) or legitimate Superior.